Digital Voices of the Future: Children's visions of future UK treescapes revealed through gaming

未来的数字之声：通过游戏揭示孩子们对未来英国树景的愿景

• 批准号: NE/Y004159/1
• 负责人: Simon Carr
• 金额: $ 10.45万
• 依托单位: University of Cumbria
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FY004159%2F1
• 关键词: Digital; Voices; Future; Children; visions

The future of UK treescapes belongs to the children and young people of today: they will witness and judge the long-term legacy of the UK Treescapes programme. Yet, interdisciplinary research that explores their engagement with treescapes temporally and spatially remains rare. Voices of the Future (VoF: NE/V021370/1) has co-produced research seeking to understand and engage children with valuing treescapes in a meaningful, hopeful manner. Even from their early years, childrens' understanding of the form and function of treescapes has been found to be nuanced and sophisticated and is usually framed within the challenges associated with observed and predicted climate change. VoF is generating research impact within educational and environmental policy and practice at local, regional and national levels. However, the impact of VoF needs scaling-up with the most important stakeholders, the children themselves. This knowledge exchange proposal seeks to address this gap to amplify the reach to a potential global audience of millions through different gaming environments.Every child experiences treescapes differently, but what might this mean for their imaginings and world-making? Is it possible for an online environment to be the dreaming, thinking, sharing and making space for children to predict and model the different treescapes of their futures? Can we use online environments as a space to democratise knowledge exchange, both amplifying and empowering the voices of children in the planning and planting of real UK Treescapes?The project applies key findings of VoF to co-produce and share game environments enabling children to visualise and explore what future treescapes could look like as a response to different choices made within their lifetimes. By simulating existing and new treescapes within real-world contexts, we can apply new knowledge of carbon storage and how children understand treescapes arising from VoF into game environments. This will afford children opportunities to envisage the worlds they would like to inhabit in symbiosis with their treescapes and experience a simulation of futures that are otherwise challenging to imagine, and even harder to place themselves within.The project centres on 7 encounters between children (8-13 years) at 2 schools within The Mersey Forest locale (Parklands Primary School, Ellesmere Port Catholic High School) and the project team to co-design and develop games using two platforms: Roblox & Unity. Each encounter comprises 2 days (1 day at each school), with each day involving two 60-90 minute interactive co-design and production workshops, each of ~30 children. This will engage ~120 children in game design and development. Between encounters, the project team will compile and incorporate the resources developed in each workshop into development of assets, mechanics and narratives within the two game environments. The Mersey Forest community woodland will host an event beyond the end of the project to link game development with real-world community tree planting.The outputs of the project will comprise immersive (Unity) and interactive (Roblox) online games enabling users to develop, visualise & share treescapes in their own real world and imagined settings. Modelling and simulating the outcome of tree planting and management in these environments will visualise how treescapes may look in the future, and can visualise and quantify the environmental (e.g. carbon sequestration, microclimate, biodiversity) socio-economic and cultural benefits provided by treescapes. These games offer potentially global scaling (Roblox has ~145 million monthly users, mainly children) of knowledge-exchange opportunities. The case example working with The Mersey Forest will evaluate how playful approaches and gaming can offer a powerful mechanism to incorporate the voice of children into the planning of treescapes and woodlands, through input to the 2025 revision of The Mersey Forest Plan

英国树景的未来属于今天的儿童和年轻人：他们将见证并判断英国树景计划的长期遗产。然而，探索它们在时间和空间上与树景的关系的跨学科研究仍然很少。未来之声（VoF：NE/V021370/1）共同开展了一项研究，旨在理解并让儿童以一种有意义、充满希望的方式珍视树木景观。即使从很小的时候起，孩子们对树景的形式和功能的理解就被发现是细致入微和复杂的，并且通常是在与观察和预测的气候变化相关的挑战的框架内进行的。 VoF 正在地方、区域和国家层面的教育和环境政策及实践中产生研究影响。然而，VoF 的影响需要扩大到最重要的利益相关者——孩子们本身。该知识交流提案旨在解决这一差距，通过不同的游戏环境扩大对全球数百万潜在受众的影响。每个孩子对树景的体验都不同，但这对他们的想象力和世界创造意味着什么？在线环境是否有可能成为孩子们梦想、思考、分享和创造空间，让他们预测和模拟他们未来的不同树景？我们能否利用在线环境作为知识交流民主化的空间，在规划和种植真实的英国树景时放大和增强儿童的声音？该项目应用 VoF 的主要发现来共同制作和共享游戏环境，使儿童能够想象和探索未来的树景，作为对他们一生中所做的不同选择的回应。通过模拟现实世界中现有的和新的树景，我们可以将碳储存的新知识以及儿童如何理解由 VoF 产生的树景应用到游戏环境中。这将使孩子们有机会想象他们想要居住的与树景共生的世界，并体验模拟未来，否则这些未来很难想象，甚至更难以置身其中。该项目以默西森林地区 2 所学校（帕克兰小学、埃尔斯米尔港天主教高中）的 7 名儿童（8-13 岁）之间的遭遇为中心，项目团队使用两个平台共同设计和开发游戏： Roblox 和 Unity。每次活动为期 2 天（每所学校 1 天），每天涉及两个 60-90 分钟的互动协同设计和制作研讨会，每个研讨会约 30 名儿童。这将吸引约 120 名儿童参与游戏设计和开发。在两次遭遇之间，项目团队将编译并将每个研讨会中开发的资源整合到两个游戏环境中的资产、机制和叙述的开发中。默西森林社区林地将在项目结束后举办一场活动，将游戏开发与现实世界的社区植树联系起来。该项目的产出将包括沉浸式 (Unity) 和互动 (Roblox) 在线游戏，使用户能够在自己的现实世界和想象的环境中开发、可视化和分享树景。对这些环境中树木种植和管理的结果进行建模和模拟，可以直观地了解未来的树景，并可以可视化和量化树景提供的环境（例如碳封存、微气候、生物多样性）、社会经济和文化效益。这些游戏提供了潜在的全球性知识交流机会（Roblox 每月约有 1.45 亿用户，主要是儿童）。与默西森林合作的案例将评估有趣的方法和游戏如何提供强大的机制，通过对默西森林计划 2025 年修订版的输入，将儿童的声音纳入树景和林地的规划中